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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28723638">Duty, and Pride</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patroie/pseuds/Patroie'>Patroie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, set post Moon over Soho</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:32:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,927</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28723638</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patroie/pseuds/Patroie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"And now you're here because you think I shouldn't go back to work yet"<br/>"Let's say that I wanted to make sure that you're alright. Which I don't think you are"<br/>"I'm not going to break apart, Miriam"</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alexander Seawoll &amp; Miriam Stephanopoulos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Duty, and Pride</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Three days before her friend – and superior officer, although that was of less importance in that instance – was supposed to return to work after his medical leave, Miriam went to visit him in his small and dingy London flat, not at all what one would expect from a DCI working in the Met, but which was central and cheap enough for Alexander Seawoll to buy. The ceiling was low, and the sloping roof made nearly half of it uninhabitable, especially for a person as tall as Alexander was, but, she suspected, he was too proud to search for something new until the roof collapsed onto his head.</p><p>Miriam had visited him countless of times before, over the decade or so they had been working together - apparently often enough for his downstairs neighbour to enquire whether she was his girlfriend, which had been such a ludicrous thought that she had burst into laughter there and then - but, if memory served correctly, never unannounced, as she was today. There had been a slim chance of him not being home, but she had taken the risk, knowing that he would have declined if she'd asked whether he wanted company that night.</p><p>He clearly had not been expecting company that night, dressed in an old, faded jumper and sweatpants when he opened the door, a far cry from the expensive suits he normally sported when they were out on shouts, and looked over all shockingly unlike his usual self. </p><p>After not seeing him every day for the past weeks it felt almost as if she had begun to forget what he looked like, and how he carried himself - just that she <em>knew </em>what she saw in front of her was not his usual self, but someone entirely different.</p><p>But how could she expect him to be unchanged, after what had happened to him?</p><p>"What the fuck are you doing here, Miriam?" He was slurring his words, but the displeasure behind them was obvious.</p><p>"It’s lovely seeing you too, Alexander. Are you going to let me in?"</p><p>There followed a few seconds of silence during which she suspected Alexander did consider slamming the door and leaving her standing outside in the cold. But then he grunted, and stepped aside, leading her into the kitchen, past a bag filled with empty beer cans and wine bottles.</p><p>"Wine?" Alexander asked, as if Miriam couldn't see that he had already made a considerable dent into the bottle before she had arrived.</p><p>She nodded, but resolved to make sure that her friend would not drink too much, even if she could understand why he wanted to. "Have I ever said no to wine?"</p><p>“That’s the attitude,” Alexander said and turned to the cabinet above the sink, where he kept his glasses, retrieving one for Miriam. He didn’t bother filling it at the counter, and instead brought the bottle to the table.</p><p>“Getting a cab back to your place?” For some reason she had never quite managed to figure out, Alexander had an intense dislike towards public transport.</p><p>“Pam promised to pick me up later”</p><p>Her wife had offered to accompany her, but she wouldn’t have been able to understand Alexander’s problems. No one did. The idea of supernatural crimes, of <em>abominations</em> created purposefully for the amusement of twisted minds, and the helplessness Miriam and her colleagues felt whenever they were confronted with cases that contained magical elements, knowing full well that they had to rely entirely on Nightingale – and now Grant – if they wanted to solve the case, was something that even the most well-meaning person would not be able to understand. The first case they had worked with Grant during the first half of the year, had drained her considerably, dragging on over several weeks, with no assurance as to when they would be able to finally put an end to it.</p><p>And she didn’t want Pam to understand. Seeing the same tired resignation on her wife’s face as she was now confronted with on Alexander’s would break her heart. Her Pam did not deserve that. None of them did. It was her Miriam kept on working, despite the knowledge that, in the grand scheme of things, there was nothing that she could do about the magical threats within and without London.</p><p>So she had done her best to keep Pam away from anything concerning magic, even more than she did with normal police work. They rarely talked about Miriam’s work in any case, and one did not reveal the existence of magic over dinner, or in bed at night. No, whenever Miriam watched Pam tend to the chickens and her garden, and talk about one day moving out of the city so they could have enough space for both a herb garden <em>and </em>one for vegetables, she was once again reaffirmed in her decision to keep the harsh reality of her work away from Pam, to protect her from the knowledge of how cruel the human species could truly be.</p><p>Remembering May’s mutilated face, imagining the pain she must have felt; a young, promising life that would now forever be overshadowed by this one, defining moment; there was an overwhelming desire within Miriam to shield Pam from all this horror. If she wanted to talk about it – which she rarely did at any rate - there was always Alexander, who she could count amongst the few people who truly understood her, or her therapist whom she had been seeing every two weeks for several years now.</p><p>The wine was cheap, nothing at all like what she was normally used to when she visited Alexander, but, after all, this was not a celebratory occasion, where some expensive, fancy wine might be appropriate, this was drinking in an effort to soften the toll their work took on their mental state.</p><p>And Miriam had never really cared about different sorts of wine. Wine was wine.</p><p>They spoke of unimportant things, at first, about what Alexander had done to fill the void that the job had left during his leave, about family and friends, about politics, about Pam’s upcoming birthday, staying a comfortable distance away from anything relating to work. Both of them knew that straying too close to it would lead to something neither of them wanted to discuss just yet – they both knew that it would have to be done at some point during the evening – Miriam, for her part, knew that she couldn’t allow Alexander to return to work without talking about it. Making sure that he was alright was more important than avoiding a conversation that would be uncomfortable. </p><p>“How’s Nightingale?”  Alexander asked at last, “I saw him when I left the hospital, briefly, but he wasn’t very talkative”</p><p>When was he ever?  She had known Nightingale for over a decade, a blurry figure at the edge of her conscience that appeared and disappeared at random, and the things she knew about him could barely fit half a page, if that. The thought that that man would voluntarily talk about his health with anyone was laughable. “Back at work, although he shouldn’t be, really”</p><p>“And now you’re here because you think I shouldn’t go back to work  yet either,” Alexander surmised. He wasn’t wrong.</p><p>“Let’s say that I wanted to make sure that you are alright. Which I don’t think you are”</p><p>“I’m not going to break apart, Miriam. I can’t simply quit because it became <em>too much to handle</em>”</p><p> “You absolute dickhead, Alexander, if it gets too much for you, you get out as fast as you fucking can. We’re doing just fine without you, you’re not irreplaceable. None of us are, except for Nightingale, and I don’t think anything short of a nuclear apocalypse would stop him from turning up”</p><p>“Is this supposed to cheer me up?”</p><p>“No, it’s the hard truth, not one of those silly fantasies we tell ourselves to keep us going. If you need more time, take it, London is not going to burn to the ground because of it. You were possessed, and nearly killed, no one could blame you if you’re not eager to jump back into the fray immediately”</p><p>“And sit here on my arse all day, doing fuck all, while more things of that sort are happening? We can’t rely on Nightingale being around forever”</p><p>They were lucky, really, that after all this time Nightingale still held on to his sense of duty compelling him to keep working with the Met, otherwise they would be completely lost, unable to tell whether a crime had been committed by mundane methods or not – and how would they ever solve a crime involving things beyond their imagination.</p><p>“What are <em>you</em> going to do about it? Learn magic and fight crime like some lone avenger during the night?” Alexander had always disliked magic – and therefore Nightingale as well – and the chaos it created every step of the way. On the few occasion they had worked with Nightingale before that year he had been reluctant to let him in on the investigation, and had made his displeasure known to everyone around him.</p><p>“If that is what it takes”</p><p>“You’ve got a fucking hero complex”</p><p>“Don’t pretend you wouldn’t do the same if it came to it”</p><p>“After last week? Of course I would. Without hesitation.” Nightingale had made sure that none of them had actually seen the reality of what some of her colleagues now referred to as <em>the strip club of Dr Moreau </em>- she would have to put her foot down concerning that – but it didn’t take much imagination to guess what might have been behind that curtain. Her mind had always been awfully creative when making up scenarios, and none of the options it provided were particularly pleasant. </p><p>Magic was dangerous, and in the wrong hands could be the tool to bring about great misery and suffering, but unfortunately it was also the only thing that could help them against fucking <em>wizards</em>.</p><p>She supposed that a bullet would be just as effective on a wizards as on a normal person, but – unless it was absolutely necessary – Miriam refused to carry a gun, and, after all, Nightingale had recovered surprisingly quickly from his wound – or at least that was what he wanted them to believe.</p><p>“But we’ve got to work with what we have, and pray to the bastards above that it’s enough when push comes to shove,” she looked at Alexander, pleadingly, “Please, promise me, that if it gets too much you admit that, and don’t run yourself ragged in some attempt to prove your worth as a police officer. There are more important things than your pride and sense of duty”</p><p>“Of course,” Alexander said, but she could tell it was an empty promise. And to herself she had to admit, that if she were asked the same question, her answer would be just the same.</p><p>There was no other choice for them but to keep going on as they had done before, hoping against all odds that they might be able to make a difference, to help those who stood a chance against the people who used magic solely for their own gain, with blatant disregard towards the ones they hurt by doing so. </p><p>And if it brought them close to the point of breaking, then so be it. Both Alexander and Miriam had made the decision to put their lives on the line for the safety of others’ when they had joined the police force, and neither of them were ready to betray that vow.</p>
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